This is a ranty post, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that I blog about. But this day has been 467 kinds of shitty and after dealing with AT&T Wireless for 3.65 hours I really need aftercare. I guess this is my aftercare. I need to vent.

Soooo…..

I’m placing a “read more” on this one. Only those who subscribe to the feed will be forced to see the whole sordid tale with their eyes, but you can skip it. I won’t be too offended. Today’s rant is about my job, my boss, my HR rep, AT&T Wireless, Comcast, Moo cards, my car, and other things. Read on if you dare. It’s disjointed and unedited and might not make sense and probably breaks 47 grammar rules. So if you really wanna read….click the “Read More” underneath the “sharing is sexy” bar.

The day started with the realization that the sopping wet patch of carpet in my car is still sopping wet. Fully saturated. I only just noticed it yesterday, but it had been raining so I chalked it up to wet shoes/pant legs. But it’s still just as bad today, and I have to wonder how long it’s been like that. And why? Is there a leak? It’s right at my feet, or rather, where my left leg rests while I drive.

Then I get to work, and find out what I missed on my day off – the day I took off to make a lot of phone calls and arrangements with regards to our move. I find out that my immediate supervisor (I work for government so there’s 500-some people in my “Office”, and so there’s lots of bosses) got called to a meeting by her supervisor. He told her that he’d gotten *4* complaints from others in nearby cubes (but wouldn’t say who) that her, me and our other co-worker are too loud, obnoxious and offensive in our conversations with each other. Ok, yeah, those two can get loud. But we’re not truly near enough to many people. So…..we’re being watched. And she found out we already WERE being watched. Spied on. To listen in to our too-loud-ness. *eyeroll* Then he tells her that him and another high level supervisor are going to be keeping an eye on all the people who go out for a smoke when it’s not break or lunch time. And write them up. And she did indeed witness him hiding out. Ok yeah, for you non-smokers I’m going to hear agreements with his ruling. For smokers, we’re going to counteract that with the fact that everybody takes unsanctioned mini breaks. They might not go out for a solitary smoke at an odd hour to calm their nerves/headache/boredom/frustration but they do it in other ways. They might stop at somebody’s desk and chitchat for 10 minutes to blow off steam. SAME THING. Yet you’re not being punished for it. AND he roped off this one section of our office that was outside of our locked door area, was private, was meant for other offices but nobody ever moved in….so it was kind of a holding place for construction items and spare parts. People who worked in our area would use that place as the ONLY place we could go to have a private cell phone conversation at break/lunch without being forced to go outside. Now we don’t even have that. Said boss then questions my supervisor on “how much work do you REALLY have to do” because he’s oblivious to all the projects he piles on our 4-person unit. I’ll be leaving, they’re not replacing our half-assed temp that just moved on, and so they’ll be down to my co-worker, my supervisor who’s technically not even the real supervisor, and one very old Indian dude who’s just biding his time until he can retire.

*sigh*

Such bullshit. I’m so glad I’m leaving. I printed out new calendars. Now I printed out so that one month takes up an entire sheet of paper, so that I can “X” off the days with my bright pink highlighter. I NEED OUT. 6 weeks.

Then I see on Twitter that AAG mentioned her blog and another had been hacked/infected w malware, check your own. I check my main first and…..sonofaBITCH it’s infected. I hate having to deal with this while I’m at work. And of course everything with GoDaddy was running slow so it was very frustrating. I had to roll back my files by nearly a whole week to get rid of the offensive script which I never did pinpoint. Now I’m back to the last version of WordPress, and wary to upgrade again, as I’d only upgraded a few days ago.

At lunchtime I try to make a few calls. First, to Comcast because, like the geeks we are, we’re willing to schlep up to CT with our secondary TV and a laptop just to get Comcast services installed BEFORE our move-in date, so that we don’t have to go 3.5 days without tv or (more importantly) internet service. But the first guy I get rattles off his schpeil so blandly, such monotone, so quietly that I thought it was a recording and when I realized it was a person…..I hung up. No way, not dealing with him.

Then I had to call up our employee retirement department. Why? No fucking idea. My HR rep said I had to call, but she didn’t exactly know why, just that “it’s what people do when they leave here”…..and of COURSE I couldn’t reach anybody so I had to leave this fucking message of “Hi I’m leaving here in 6 weeks and my HR rep told me I had to call but she didn’t say why so…..I’m not sure what I need…..please call me back….” And of course someone finally calls me back 15 mins before her shift ends, I miss the call, I call back with 9 minutes to spare but she won’t answer or is gone already. From what I gather, but I’m not sure, I think that my employer (or me, technically?) put in $X every paycheck into my retirement fund. Since I haven’t been there long enough to be “vested” I don’t get to collect pension from them, so I get a refund of whats in the account. I have NO CLUE how much is in there, and as I browsed the form on their not-very-informative website, it made my head spin. I have no clue how to handle it.

Jesus mother of pearl why can’t I just QUIT?!?! Formal letter of resignation, “exit conference” week before I go, talk with retirement people, fill out this form, do that, talk to benefits. O. M. G. And my in-office HR Rep knows NOTHING. She’s got a generic list of what needs done by her and me and others, but I’m so out of the loop. When I got the email about the exit conference meeting I was all “WTF is this shit, nobody told me about this??” She’s worthless. Am I getting an extra paycheck (my first was held) and for how much? What’s this retirement thing, how much? Nobody can fucking answer me. SURELY others have quit like me….SURELY somebody has to have dealt with this and has answers….no???????

The day is crawling by and I’m bored with my mundane job and just wanna leave. My friend who’s been AWOL all day finally pops online and asks if I got the text he sent. Since someone else also sent me texts last night that I didn’t get, I finally questioned if it was my carrier. So I leave work at 5, and call AT&T. Apparently, not having a home phone is a real fucking detriment because god forbid you should not have another phone other than the one you’re calling from that has a problem. They had to do something to reset/re-register, and finally I started getting all my text messages. But while I was on the phone with them I thought, can’t hurt, I’ll tell them about the other problem I’m having with the phone that’s getting worse and worse.

While I’m on the phone, I open my my Mini-Moo cards that just arrived. I used the graphics from my banner up there, and yet the cards are REALLY dark. So dark that it looks quite shitty. I’ve emailed Moo to tell them I’m unhappy with my cards but I bet it won’t get fixed in time for Momentum. So do I give out shitty looking cards that make me look like a fucking hack of a blog designer, or just shrug and look unprofessional and say nope, no business card, sorry.

8:38 pm I finally, after talking to 5 people with varying levels of foreign accents and repeating my same problem/story 10 times, have a warranty replacement phone on its way to me. Samsung, the fucking bastards, are not up with technological times, and I couldn’t upgrade my Android to Froyo because their motherfucking software won’t work on 64-bit systems. All our computers are Win7-64 bit. Except one, thats buried under a mountain of shit. We tried my netbook, but WinXP was too old to have drivers for the phone so that failed. Finally we get the phone’s drivers on the unearthed computer, get the goddamn Samsung Update program installed…..and it keeps failing the update. There is no way for me to do it. I called Samsung before I found out about the 64-bit OS shit, and they told me that I’d have to send them my phone for them to upgrade my Android OS.

Um.

Hell. No.

You want me to SEND YOU MY LIFELINE and be without my phone, my smartphone, with all my photos and contacts and apps and *ahem* porn, for maybe a week or more????

Fuck. You.

Finally I call back AT&T because the second tech support guy had said if Froyo didn’t fix the problem, they’d issue me a warranty replacement. Last guy wanted to do troubleshooting (again) and possibly a Master Reset which would cause me to lose ALL my data and all my apps and might not even work, to which I replied, tearfully, with much frustration, and for the 5th time that conversation, that I was told they would replace it can WE JUST FUCKING DO THAT PLEASE MMMKAY?!?

*cries*

Safeword, AT&T. You win. I need aftercare. If I thought I could make it to the gas station without killing someone in my car, I’d go buy a pack of cigs. Today was apparently a REALLY BAD DAY to decide that I’m not going to buy another pack and I’m going to try to stop smoking. I’m not addicted to the nicotine, never have been, just needed them for the dopamine burst that nicotine gives. The calm to my frazzled nerves. The perk to my boredom.

I’m fully wrung-out. Dealing with AT&T has me mentally and physically exhausted. I think I’m just going to make myself another mug of coffee and watch another episode of Dexter on my phone that won’t stop with the random opening-of-search-form-when-I-didn’t-touch-a-thing shit, and hope I can get through an episode without too much stress, and just pass out after I take my meds. I’m done.

One more kill-me-now day to get through tomorrow and then a weekend full of packing, even though there is honestly and truly nowhere in the fucking apartment to put boxes of packed stuff. Nowhere.

To the one or two people who actually read this whole thing……thanks for stickin around. You get a gold star.

Putting on the HR Hat. With your retirement, you do not have to do anything to it right away. If you get another state or municipal job when you move you can speak to them about buying time into their system with your current time. If you can’t do that, you can roll the retirement money into a 401K, 403B, or an IRA. Whatever you do, DO NOT withdraw the money as you will be bitchslapped with taxes.

If you have health insurance you have to be notified about COBRA within 30 days of leaving and you have 60 days to decide if you want to elect COBRA. IF you can avoid COBRA, do it as you pay 100% of the total insurance costs, plus a 2% administration fee. Then if you had an HMO and not a PPO you are pretty fucked as you are most likely leaving the network area and the insurance will not cover as much. Same for dental.

Generally any earned, unused vacation time is to be paid to you in your final check, which you should receive in the next regular pay period after your last day. Each job has their own policy regarding earned, unused sick or personal days. Your employee handbook should have those answers.

If they held a week back, you will get that in your last check.

You should try to get letters of reference from whomever you want to get them from BEFORE you leave, while they still want you to be productive. Don’t wait until after you leave, because they are hard to get.

Good luck with Comcast. I also book the cable several weeks before the move so we don’t have to go without.

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